December 16, 2009

Exclusive: The Story Behind The Tropper Scandal

A woman in the process of converting to Judaism told FailedMessiah.com a well known and powerful ultra-Orthodox rabbi who supervises conversions worldwide asked her for sexual favors in return for completing her conversion.

A woman in the process of converting to Judaism told FailedMessiah.com that a well known and powerful ultra-Orthodox rabbi who supervises conversions worldwide asked her for sexual favors in return for completing her conversion. The woman alleges the rabbi, Leib Tropper, founder of Eternal Jewish Family, arranged sexual encounters between her and and his wife – encounters Tropper watched. She also alleges Tropper asked her to engage in sexual encounters and have phone sex with other men.

Unauthenticated video and audio tapes were anonymously sent to Jewish bloggers over the past few days. These tapes appear to support her claims.

Tropper abruptly resigned over the weekend from Eternal Jewish Family, the conversion organization he founded, citing a desire to pursue “a variety of other interests.”

“I have decided to resign my position at the Eternal Jewish Family (EJF) effective December 12, 2009…. As a founder of EJF, I am proud of my role of being an architect of a very dynamic and important movement in our community. I will in the coming months do my utmost to be of service to the Jewish community in any way I can.”

The resignation, made in an official EJF press release late Monday, two days after Tropper’s resignation took effect, made no mention of the allegations.

Calls to Tropper’s home were answered by a voicemail system announcing his voicemail box is full. Eternal Jewish Family refused comment, and calls to Yeshvas Kol Yaakov, a yeshiva for returnees to Orthodox Judaism Tropper still heads in Monsey, NY, were not returned. Rabbi Elya Ber Wachtfogel, named yesterday as the new head of EJF’s rabbinic committee, did not return a call left for comment.

FailedMessiah.com obtained an exclusive interview with the woman making the allegations, whose name is being withheld due to fear of reprisal. She claims to have made the tapes after Tropper allegedly pressured her to have sex with other men.

The woman says she intended for the tapes she made to be played only for leading rabbis involved with EJF. Instead, the tapes were leaked through email and on the Internet.

Although not the first person to do so, Guma Aguiar, a billionaire former backer of EJF who has been in a long running dispute with Tropper, sent some of those tapes to FailedMessiah.com. Aguiar has long contended that Tropper has embezzled money from EJF, and launched a court case against Tropper in Israel over the summer in an attempt to recoup money he says he personally gave Tropper to distribute to various Israeli charities. It is unclear how Aguiar got the tapes.

The woman told FailedMessiah.com Tropper was “holding things over me.” Tropper can be heard on one of the tapes asking the woman to have sex or phone sex with other men, and explaining to the woman that some of the money he sent her is for lawyers, while the rest is for her. He used to tell me, she said, “If you fulfill my needs, I’ll fulfill yours – and you need a conversion.”

According to the woman, the motivation for Tropper’s actions was sexual. She says Tropper asked her to role play certain sexual scenarios with these men, either capturing the encounter on tape or describing the encounter in detail to him afterward, which she says she refused/. “He likes to see women raped,” she said. While sometimes Tropper suggested men for her to have encounters with, he encouraged her to find men on her own and then report back to him. “He wanted someone who would be very rough.”

She says other women were also recruited by Tropper to fulfill these fantasies. One of those other women, she claims, is Tropper’s own wife Leba, who the woman says engaged in a sexual relationship with her as Tropper watched. In one of the audio tapes made available to FailedMessiah.com, the woman refuses sex with other men. As Tropper persists, she tells him that she “just wants everything to stay the same,” and says she “likes what she did with Leba.”

Tropper can also be heard on the tapes saying, “I’m not going to force you to do anything you don’t want to…you own your body, I don’t own your body.”

At one point in the relationship, the woman claims she cried and told Tropper, “This feels like prostitution,” and tried to put an end to Tropper’s sexual demands. She says Tropper defended his actions and continued unabated.

Repeated calls for comment to Rabbi Tropper’s home and his yeshiva were not returned.

Vicki Polin, the head of The Awareness Center, The International Jewish Coalition Against Sexual Abuse/Assault, noted that adult women are more likely to be victims of clergy sexual abuse than are children. “This is just one of many cases in which a member of the clergy uses their authority to lure in…unsuspecting adult women for their own personal pleasure.”

Tropper and Wachtfogel, the new head of Eternal Jewish Family’s rabbinic committee, were both instrumental in arranging the 2005 ban issued by leading ultra-Orthodox rabbis against Rabbi Natan Slifkin. Slifkin, who writes on the interface of Torah and modern science, was labelled a heretic, and his books were banned, in part for suggesting the universe is older than 5770 years.

In 2006, after Israel’s chief rabbis issued demands tightening the conversion process and regulating which Orthodox rabbis would be allowed to supervise conversions, Tropper was able to position EJF as the leading moderator of Orthodox conversions outside of Israel.

In what may be the first documented case of its kind in America, in 2006 Tropper revoked a woman’s conversion months after supervising it because Tropper was told the woman sometimes wore pants. Tropper told the woman she and her child born post-conversion are no longer Jewish and said he had the woman’s file at the Israeli chief rabbinate amended to reflect that, effectively barring her from living in Israel as Jew if she so chose, and effectively revoking her conversion worldwide. Tropper’s actions contributed to the woman’s divorce. She and her child now live as non-Jews.

When asked if she still wanted to convert to Judaism, the woman making the current allegations against Tropper said she does. “Yes, I do. Very much so…somehow I will do it.”

* Parts of this post may appear to be similar to the New York Jewish Week's story posted last night. That resemblance exists because I wrote the Jewish Week story. The Jewish Week removed my byline at last minute, because editors said they needed to quote me about Tropper's significance for Orthodox conversions to Judaism.

" Parts of this post may appear to be similar to the New York Jewish Week's story posted last night. That resemblance exists because I wrote the Jewish Week story. The Jewish Week removed my byline and the byline of my coauthor at last minute, because editors said they needed to quote me about Tropper's significance for Orthodox conversions to Judaism."

Your addition here sounds like someone is not being honest.The Jewish Week?You?
You'd probably like to own up now and tell us if you were paid for the article.Nothing really wrong, but hiding the fact is dishonest.

Andrew... read this post again. He was setting up his wife with his lover, for his own viewing purposes. That is what I mean by "pimping", not the exchange of money from other men (although that too in the case of the lover).

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or certainty of corruption by full authority. There is no worse heresy than the fact that the office sanctifies the holder of it"

a modner zach: a mere half hour ago, wikipedia entry for leib tropper ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leib_Tropper ) had a whole shtikl on his scandals going back a few years, plus links to the audio files of the tape recordings. however, plutzlim now when i went back to wiki, the entire part on scandals & the tapes are gone!!! who is deleting his negative profile, who???????

"Guys like Tropper get all caught up into halacha. So, i doubt he'd pimp his wife, an eishes ish to fornicate with another man.
But his mistress, who was not yet converted, would have the din of a goy, and consensual sex would not violate his idea of halacha.
It's so krum."
Andrew,
Here is an interesting excerpt fromhttp://judaism.ajula.edu/Content/ContentUnit.asp?CID=1839&u=8055&t=0

"“Naval birshut Ha-Torah” comes from the medieval period; from the mystical sage and Torah commentator, the Ramban, known as Nachmanides. Ramban insists that a Jew should be held to a higher standard than the mere requirements of the law. He affirms that one should conduct oneself according to the highest standards, even beyond what is required. And so in his commentary to the Torah portion K’doshim Tihiyu, you shall be holy, in the Book of Leviticus, Rambam develops this phrase that I have found nowhere before him in Jewish tradition, of a “Naval birshut Ha-Torah.Yet someone who adheres to the letter of the law and ignores its context, disdains its spirit, is held up by Rambam, himself and punctilious observant Jew, as a fool. As worse than a fool - a sinner. A later commentary tells us, “It was to make this point understood that Ramban preceded his words to the portion, "you shall be holy", so that one should not be a “Naval with the permission of Torah.” Rather, each of us should behave according to the embracing principles of Torah, such as, “You shall be holy.”...The mitzvot make like beautiful and meaningful for an observant Jew. But one can become so distracted by the details of the mitzvot that they spiral down to mere rules. They can become simply laws to check off a list: Did I follow that rule? Yes. Done. Check. And in separating the laws from their roots, the deeper inclusive values that the Torah was meant to embody and further in the world, we pervert those very laws. We make of them sources of arrogance and smugness and judgementalism which is the very opposite of the true purpose of Torah. The laws of the Torah, rooted in the living earth of compassion, of justice, of hesed, and tzedek, those mitzvot bear beautiful fruit. But when they become an end in themselves, when they are severed from the soil from which they emerge, then they border on the blasphemous and the idolatrous. Then one becomes a Naval birshut Ha-Torah."

You just know that if there'd been rumours he'd been drinking halav akum like there were rumours always floating around about the sexual stuff, they'd have thrown him out of the rabbinical world years ago.

"Guys like Tropper get all caught up into halacha. So, i doubt he'd pimp his wife, an eishes ish to fornicate with another man.

But his mistress, who was not yet converted, would have the din of a goy, and consensual sex would not violate his idea of halacha.

It's so krum"

I agree with you 100%! Back in the day when I was learning halacha this is what we were taught. But we were also taught that although according to halacha it is permissable, it is not exceptable behavior in todays Jewish world.

In addition, male homosexuality is clearly a violation of Torah, however lesbianism is not forbidden, so therefore permissable.

So if you are lucky enough to have a willing wife and a goysha women without a katuba, you got it made!

Atleast until everyone finds out.

But I'm sure he slept very well at night knowing that nothing he was doing went against "halacha" in God's eyes.

It's a shame common sense doesn't play a bigger role in "halacha". God gave us that too!

no idea what to make of the allegations, but a non-jewish woman isn't nida like a jewish woman as i'm sure someone pointed out in comments, haven't read through yet), etc, etc, and there are definitely ways people have rationalized around this sort of thing. A 'pre'-geuret is in just the kind of situation that I'm relatively amazed something like this hasn't happened.

this could be one of the most disgusting jewish scandals ever. its so gross. rabbi tropper, if this is true, is such a despicable shandeh, its beyond comprehension.
Even though i have no love for the ultra orthodox rabbinate, i hope in the name of God that this is not true.
Some people just want to eat their own shit. there is nothing we can do except try not to look at it, and if we do, try not to choke on our own vomit.

Mekubal!
I suspect that you are right.
Tropper was in a fight with a Billionare.I imagine that some commenters will remember another fight between a Billionare and his brother-in-law, with the B. sending him a pretty decoy who seduced and then the evidence was sent to the wife.The B. ended up with jail time for his dirty trick.
I listened to the tape , just to boring, to much of a set up job to be anything other than a call girl set up.
Remember that the downfall of many a great man and a small one too is thru a seductress.Adam and Eve, anyone?

Gerald, listen to the tapes. This is a guy going on and on and being a jerk of his own violition and alluding to stuff he's done and initiated.

And if a guy is being "set-up" (and the tapes don't support that from what I hear)--just coz somebody puts a pin up doesn't mean we have to make like bowling balls and roll ourselves down the alleyway.

No. No one except you could be so naive. Comparing this menuval and his zonah wife to Adam Harishon and Chavah is despicable. Tropper used the power bestowed upon him by the "gedolim" to turn his Eternal Jewish Fraud organization into an escort service. There are no words that can accurately describe this piece of filth. Only a child molester could be considered a bigger lowlife and scumbag. This guy calls himself a "rabbi"? FEH! Next time you see him, spit in his face!

Of all the fraud and corruption that has been exposed in the Orthodox community, this one establishes a new low. Tropper was handed the keys to the conversion business. He was handed a virtual monopoly. His ruthless tactics were well documented. His bullying of other rabbis who performde conversions such as Bomzer (another menuval)was endorsed by these "gedolim". This story needs to be told in its entirety. The public has a right to know so that such corruption is no longer tolerated. Enough is enough! Child molesters and their enablers, pimps and their enablers, money launderers and their enablers must all be exposed once and for all. Enough apologetics, enough enabling, enough secrecy, enough sweeping under the carpet, enough Lubinsky PR spins, enough coverups, enough lies, enough favoritism for beards and hats, enough pidyon shvuyim funds for criminals, enough Agudah lobbying to protect criminals, enough Matzav Al Jazeera style journalism, enough, enough, enough!!!

Steve,
Take it easy, in your righteous indignation you may choke yourself.
I said that a woman brought a man down cuz the man was not thinking with his head.Happens all the time.Happens to Presidents too.Even happens to Reform Rabbis from Cherry Hill.

Now I happen to think that the EJF is a good idea,hope that does not shock you!I think that our job in the world is to attract people to convert to Orthodox Judaism to spread Godliness in the world.There are of course halachik ramifications and I"m no rabbi to decide .
So yes, this is a horrible, shameful story, the right thing to do was to resign.
However,I"m just surprised at how everybody is so surprised at hearing a story like this.Unfortunately it can happen to everyone

Gerald, I think Tropper is more than your run of the mill scandal. Tropper was in a unique position of power and authority deciding a persons status as a Jew. Further, he went after Rav Slifkin to put him in cherem. In other words "he choked himself in his righteous indignation".

Is it even possible for a rabbi -- especially a rabbi who was not on the beis din -- to revoke someone's conversion? To revoke a conversion wouldn't you have to prove they weren't observant right after the conversion, or that they intended not to be observant right after the conversion?In something as serious as revoking gerus, I would think that the convert would have a chance to argue her case to a beis din, instead of having random rabbis invalidating her conversion whenever they hear a rumor about her. If this analysis is correct, the women and her children are still Jewish, but think they aren't. What a tragedy. Hopefully the present scandal will cause people to doubt the legitimacy of this unilateral revoking of conversions.

Again, NO, this does not happen to everyone. You make it seem that it's only about another guy committing adultery, a la Bill Clinton, Eliot Spitzer or Tiger Woods. This goes a lot deeper. This is about power, domination, manipulation, using religion as a weapon for personal greed and lust, etcetra, etcetra, etcetra. Imagine if the Catholic Church, with all its horrible sex scandals notwithstanding, was running a prostitution ring? How big of a scandal would that be? Would you just shrug it off and say "it can happen to everyone"? I'm sure Lubinsky will try to spin it that way in his capacity as EJF's PR stuntman. I'm not acccusing you of being his troll, but you are sounding a lot like his spinmeisters. Harry Maryles (of all people) wrote an excellent post on this scandal. You should check it out on haemtza.blogspot.com.

I listened to one tape where they are discussing phone sex, sex with other men, and sex with his wife. I get the image of the two of them and their playmates rutting like pigs. What a hypocrite! I wonder if the woman whose conversion he revoked, including her son's, can sue him? I'd like to see her get revenge.

Steve is correct, and the details are important. There was a case in Seattle where an Orthodox Rabbi had an affair with a conversion student, he was removed from his position, but it was clearly nothing like this! The centrality of the degradation of this woman, his rape fantasies, these are very worrisome in a person who was involved in her "outreach". Interestingly, in the case against Gafni, this need for sexual humiliation also emerged (in his 3rd wife's deposition), Ben Zion Sobol targeted the baal teshuva students under his care, and Lanner's capacity to humilate and demean the people he was "being mekarev" was legendary.

Is the drive to do kiruv in some way related to abasement and humiliation of the subjects being "taught Judaism"? Is this a playing out of the individuals own deepest feelings about what he is teaching (for after all, Tropper could as well have gone to an S&M club for this kind of "fun", why davka unload this upon a conversion student?).

The implications of what this says about the whole concept of "kiruv" are truly sickening.

Is it even possible for a rabbi -- especially a rabbi who was not on the beis din -- to revoke someone's conversion?

Most Halakhic sources I'm aware of say no conversion can ever be annulled. Conversions never used to be annulled in practice, instead rabbis simply accepted the certificate of giyyur as proof of Jewish status.

It is a sick, recent departure from traditional practice, but it has had caused serious heartache to Halakhic converts and their descendants.

i hate the way Tropper did conversions, yet I hope he has some righteous explanations.
As he has already resigned, it leads me to believe that there is smoke behind this fire, and he is probably guilty of being some sort of deviant.
Tropper is just one more hypocrite, one more criminal, in the nation of israel.

There's a real battle going on over at the Wiki article. Love it. Someone by the name of "Truth Transparency" keeps posting info and links to the tapes and other people keep deleting it. Then there is another person, crazy as a loon, making wild accusations that also get deleted. You can find it all by clicking on the "history" tab. Here's the links to the tapes again:

I'm having difficulty imagining anyone following this guy let alone sleeping with him. Besides being a pervert, one, though born and raised in the United States, I can barely understand him, and two, he's embarrassingly immature.

This is not as ordinary as Clinton having sex with Monica. This guy played super righteous role for decades. He accused every other rabbi doing conversion of not being machmir enough. He effectively invalidated (put in doubt) ALL CONVERSIONS that were not done by his organization EJF. This is over 99% of all conversions. He put through grief and uncertainty hundreds of thousands of sincere people who joined Jewish nation and all their descendents.

I thought that he is just self rightious narrow minded talmudist, but as it looks now he is a first rate criminal.

Gerald, your cool headedness and talk that it could happen to anybody is like saying Eichman is not a criminal for organizing killing of 6 million Jews because it can happen to anybody.

No. It does not happen to anybody, and it can not happen to anybody, because not everybody is a moral pervert and a criminal. Tropper is. Feinstein who is covering for him now I suspect is not clean guy either. Chief rav Metzger who praized EJF and Sherman recently is a pervert too.

Why is everyone overlooking the lesbian wife angle to the Tropper disgrace? Could it be because there is no clear m'kor prohibiting lesbianism in the Torah? Anywho, I'm more concerned about Tropper's desire to role play rape and other means of debasing women. This all stems from the ass backwards way FFBs are raised, with their libidos surpressed. Let's just admit that the Old Shtot way of doing things may have been fine back in the day but is an absolute failure and disaster in America.

And what's really sad about this whole story is that we are actually THANKFULL that Tropper was "only" abusing adult women he had a hand (and sometimes other body parts) over. We're thankful because it was old fashioned hetero, male on female abuse, and not that we found out Tropper was raping hairless youth by the dozens like Kolko, or that Tropper was raping his own kin like Weingarten.

another important issue to point out: over the past couple of years, the israeli rabbinate has disqualified all the conversions of rabbi chaskel lookstein because he supposedly may have taken money for one of his conversions. (rather, i think it was that someone he converted later made a contribution to one of his mosdos, not even to him personally. i do not the intricacies of the halachach involved, but i suspect that many a frum & chareidi rov receives financial compensation for his efforts in one form or another -- but i digress.)

if this is the case, how much more so with this tropper scandal, that we have to assume THAT ALL FEMALE CONVERSIONS HE SUPERVISED ARE SUSPECT OF BEING DONE FOR ALTERIOR (READ: SEXUAL) FAVORS & ARE IPSO FACTO DISQUALIFIED.

how many well-intended giyoreses did this shmuck screw up? when will the rabonim here & the rabanut in israel realize the hypocricy they are endorsing? don't all these women now have to go through a "giyur lechumrah"? etc. etc.?

can a someone with yadin tadin please clarify this very important halachik sha'alah here? thanks.

Years ago, the EMT shared its space with the fire dept. Every motzse Shabbos, the black hatters would line up next door to the fire dept house and down the sidewalk. It was a whore house next to the fire house. My cousin was an EMT, and would tell me these stories, and more. Just another black hat perversion. I wonder, did the black hatters, soak and salt the meat before they dined?

ZIY, I don't know all of the intricacies of Halakha either but from what I've read opinions will always differ from rabbi to rabbi in situations of questionable conversions. Some hold that the history is that even fraudulent conversions should be upheld as we have a history of accepting 'suspect' conversions. Others would insist on Giyyur L'chumra- but the people advocating this are the types that are never satisfied with a conversion, especially if you don't live according to their chumrot.

I also afraid that although Rav Tripper is a major abuser of converts, his humiliation will lead to more convert abuse by Haredi and other "presumption of guilt" types. Now they will say that all converts are suspect and even more cetralized authority over them must be established. They will increase convert abuse 100 fold.

What could be done to prevent it? I wonder, how can we prevent punishing already abused converts by the self righteous, scheming, suspecious black and not so black hatters?

I always knew that Shmarya will come back to Lubavitch! All it took is a lowlife tropper for shmarya to realize that it is better for him to align with Guma and his non jewish wife jamie and the plant that they planted on the lowlife tropper and now all tht we need is that they (together with bomzer who took 40,000$ for jamie's fake conversion and together with the other chabad rabbi who got a building for that deal) go in front of 770 and with krinski announce: didan natzach and YECHI ADONENU MELECH HAMASHIACH LEOLAM VAED!

We are constantly being accussed of adhereing to a degenerate religion by
Anti-Semites. Stories look this reinforces
their rantings. Great job on Disgracing
our people, the Torah, and God.
Perhaps this so called rabbi should put
his head between his legs and kiss his
buttocks good bye.

Now that Tropper has thrown suspicion on many sincere conversions he will probably start doing divorces ala his monsey buddy tendler. So now every get will also be suspected if woman subsequently
has a kid, the frumchiks will scream about mamzeirus and being shocked, shocked!

Show me one frum leader who every voluntarily resigned because they should have known and didnt. Chareidim consider such resignations in Japan chukos hagoyim.

These self proclaimed gadolim want the combined powers of malchus, kehunah, nevius and shoftim and the responsiblity burden of a shomer chinom who can also prove he is a shoter and tinok.

Of course they also want the lesser responsibility of a shomer chinom even when they were paid handsomely when they should have abstained because they were nogeiah b'davar.

Rocky, the difference between Tendler and Tropper is that they always claimed there were tapes and other proof on Tendler but it was never produced. And once he won every one of his law suits, the anti Tendler wagon lost a lot of steam.

Here with the Tropmeister you've got him on tape crystal clear saying he likes rape play and the woman saying she liked what she did with Leba. Sounds like Tropper was running Caligula, not a yeshiva.

They are still battling it out at the Wiki page. It's a real disappointment that they keep removing the links to the tape and editing out negative information.

In a court of law, recordings are authenticated by someone familiar with the voice testifying that is X's voice. Recordings are also self-authenticating when they make references to events names, etc., that in context identify the voice.

In these recordings, there are both forms of authentication. So, there is really no issue of whether it is Tropper or not.

how do we know this is true that we are all ready to kill this guy .1 ladies (non jewish)saying something and its g-ds word.its nothing ,recordings can be sliced and put together and so any media. we belive in a system of 2 witnesses less than that pardon my french its bull shit BULL SHIT and all you blogers passing judgment make sure your crap is in order because the way you judge you get judged.and it sounds like you like this.

this story is 100% not true. a man was mad at him for a few reasons one because rabbi tropper didn't want to convert his wife so he made up these stories and videos and had someone tap their phones to get their voice. rabbo tropper is a god fearing jew and he has all the gedolim backing his decisions that he makes. people who say things are people who are upset at him for not converting likw more modern people. however,rabbi tropper decsions are acccording to great gedolim and rabbis